Monday, February 07, 2005

ReBelle Daily Dispatch

E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Washington Post Writers Group

Not even a smidgen? Bush Social Security hysteria stops at giving back a dime of his tax cuts

WASHINGTON -- Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush's State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.

John Staresinich is a Purple Heart veteran who has slept in cracks in highway overpasses and abandoned cars, camped out in thin tents next to railroad tracks and fought off rats and bugs in Chinatown flophouses.
In December, he was diagnosed with severe combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder -- 32 years after returning from Vietnam -- and is now getting help from the federal Veterans Affairs in Chicago. He says it took more than a year of begging that agency.

---The closest Bush will ever come to a Purple Heart is if they marker one in on a bandaid to try to smear an opponent. An opponent who DID NOT DESSERT his post. Duh' Leader propably thinks Veterans SHOULD beg.. His policies seem to have him GETTING OFF on it.---

The United States placed a newspaper advertisement on Friday offering rewards of millions of dollars for information leading to the arrest of Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda kingpins.

The half-page ad in the Urdu daily Mashriq, published in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border, puts a 5-million-dollar price on the head of the 9/11 mastermind and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

----OK WAIT JUST A DAMN MINUTE.....I thought the reward was 50 (FIFTY) million dollars FOR ONE...For two, IS newspaper ads what is COSTING US BILLIONS? bin Laden will not be found because BUSH DON'T WANT HIM FOUND! We can find Saddams spider hole BUT NOT bin Ladens LUXURY CAVE???? Boys and Girls, when it comes to bin Laden..There is TREASON afoot.-----

President Bush announces a $2.5 trillion budget for fiscal 2006 tomorrow that takes a hard line with domestic spending, slashing or eliminating more than 150 federal programs. But the administration's record last year does not promise much success.
A year ago the White House targeted 65 programs to save nearly $5 billion. But Congress agreed to ax only five of them -- and restored a previously eliminated a trade-relations program with historic whaling partners, and the saving shrank to $292 million.

For those wondering how much distance new Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will keep from the White House, here's an early clue: He's taking three White House lawyers with him to be his top aides at the Justice Department.

Gonzales, confirmed Thursday, said during his confirmation hearings: "I will no longer represent only the White House, I will represent the United States of America and its people. I understand the differences between the two roles."

But now comes word that Gonzales plans to name Ted Ullyot to be his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson as his deputy chief of staff, and Raul Yanes as counselor, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. All three have been lawyers in the White House counsel's office under Gonzales.

If the names sound familiar, it may be because Ullyot and Yanes were the coordinators of the White House's response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. That investigation is being handled by, uh, the Justice Department.

---Let us NOT FORGET...WHOMEVER leaked Mrs. Plames' name as a C.I.A. agent did so as a DIRECT act against her husband, who had critisized the Bush story about Niger yellowcake. This act is NO LESS than TREASON... Novak...We KNOW your the mouthpiece that revealed the secret. You too will be brought to JUSTICE.... By WHOM you ask?...BY WE...---

---Can you say REGIONAL CONFLICT?...It sounds so much CLEANER than Civil War..---
---Oh and BTW...I already got one complaint for an Al Jazeera link and I'll make this clear right now...In this day and these times Al Jazeera has AS MUCH credibility as ANY of our so called 'Fee Press'...When you want to KNOW whats happening OVER THERE.. You might want to actually listen to the people who are OVER THERE..---

He refuses a new air conditioner, yet his office is Internet-wired. He wants women to take political office, but not to shake the hands of men outside their families. He is easily the most powerful man in Iraq. Yet he's an Iranian.

---As a women this is appalling to me. Appalling because even under that bastard Saddam, Iraqi women have been MORE free than almost ALL other women in the Middle East. Now that freedom will never be found again in our lifetimes and these women will pay the terrible price of it.---

There is a word used often by politicians in Iraq's deep south. It is tahmeech, meaning isolation.

It is used to say that for decades not a single government minister in Baghdad has come from Iraq's second city, Basra. It signifies a generation of discrimination against Shias by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.

Now, if the initial results of last Sunday's Iraqi elections prove to represent the final picture, the centre of political gravity has shifted inexorably south - away from the violence of the cities of the north, away from Baghdad and that city's technocratic class - towards the poverty-stricken, dust-blown Shia heartland

Worried that the nation's aging nuclear arsenal is increasingly fragile, American scientists have begun designing a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be sturdier and more reliable and to have longer lives, federal officials and private experts say.

The officials say the program could help shrink the arsenal and the high cost of its maintenance. But critics say it could needlessly resuscitate the complex of factories and laboratories that make nuclear weapons and could possibly ignite a new arms race.

Last month, the self-appointed head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, railed against ''this evil principle of democracy'' and said he would send his fighters to kill people who tried to vote. Days before, in Washington, President Bush delivered an inaugural address focused almost exclusively on promoting democracy, which he portrayed as an antidote for ''our vulnerability.'' His theory was that ''resentment and tyranny'' simmer in undemocratic nations, breeding violent ideologies that will ''cross the most defended borders'' to pose a ''mortal threat.''
Given these statements by Zarqawi and Bush, Americans might well conclude that Al Qaeda's primary aim is preventing democracy. Following the president's theory, they might assume terrorism cannot grow in democracies and that the best way to deal with it is to create more democracies. Unfortunately, both beliefs may be mistaken.

Vice President Cheney acknowledged yesterday that the federal government would need to borrow trillions of dollars over the next few decades to cover the cost of the personal retirement accounts at the heart of President Bush's plan to restructure Social Security.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Cheney said the government would have to borrow $754 billion over the next 10 years, and conceded that the price tag would involve borrowing trillions of dollars more in subsequent decades.

Condoleezza Rice says the United States has no plans to attack Iran 'at this point in time'. But recent history suggests otherwise

06 February 2005

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace

Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

President Bush's rhetorical flourishes against tyranny, both in his state of the union speech and his inaugural address, have left Britain, the rest of the EU and much of America wondering if Iran will be the next target of US military might. The consternation is great, and not without cause. Under the Bush administration, a pathology has emerged for asserting foreign policy, and each step foreshadows the next: the President expounds vague principles to stir American hearts and, subsequently, lower administration officials mumble the frightening details. That's the way the US ended up occupying Iraq, and it is how any move will be made against Iran.
The President's thinking on Iran is readily discernible. A few hours before Bush's inauguration, Vice-President Dick Cheney said on a radio talk show that "Iran is at the top of the list" of trouble spots because of "a fairly robust nuclear programme". A similar public pronouncement about Iraq by Cheney proved to be unfounded, but had, nonetheless, the political effect of generating public support for invasion. The day after his state of the union speech, President Bush repeated his conviction that Iran was "the world's primary state sponsor of terrorism". The White House ought to have diminished credibility on such allegations after Iraq, but the American public continues, disturbingly, to listen and trust.

Mr. Steubing jumped at the chance to participate in an experimental drug study at the Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, believing it offered him the hope of surviving longer. The research coordinator, Paul H. Kornak, told Mr. Steubing that he was "just a perfect specimen," with the body of a man half his age, according to Jayne Steubing, Mr. Steubing's widow.

He was not, though. Because of a previous cancer and poor kidney function, Mr. Steubing was not even eligible to participate in the experiment, according to government documents. Mr. Kornak, however, brushed that obstacle aside. He altered Mr. Steubing's medical records, according to prosecutors, and enrolled him in the study. He also posed as a doctor.

The longtime Oakland star, who made a brief appearance with the Yankees in 2000, claims he introduced steroids to the game and injected fellow Bash Brother Mark McGwire in the rear end numerous times in clubhouse bathroom stalls.

He also describes watching disgraced Yankee slugger Jason Giambi and McGwire injecting each other when they both played with the Oakland A's, and says he personally taught All-Star and potential Hall of Famers Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez to use 'roids after he was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1992.

Canseco claims the team's general managing partner at the time - an aspiring politician named George W. Bush - had to have been aware that his players were using performance-enhancing drugs but did nothing about it.

White House spokesman Ken Lisaius declined to comment on the allegations, but he noted that President Bush called on players and owners during his 2004 State of the Union address to get rid of steroids and applauded the beefed-up drug policy Major League Baseball and the Players Association agreed to in December.

"This President's position on steroids has been clear for some time," Lisaius said.

Bush Budget Raises Drug Prices for Many Veterans
By ROBERT PEAR and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran would both retaliate and accelerate its drive to master nuclear technology if the United States or Israel attacked its atomic facilities, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator warned on Sunday.
Hassan Rohani, secretary-general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, also told Reuters there was nothing the West could offer Tehran that would persuade it to scrap a nuclear program which Washington fears may be used to make bombs.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents struck at Iraqi police forces with a suicide bomb, a car bomb and mortars in the cities of Mosul and Baqouba on Monday, killing at least 30 people as they pressed their campaign to undermine the nation's fledgling security forces.
The deadliest attack came in Baqouba, where a car bomb exploded outside the gates of a provincial police headquarters, killing 15 people and wounding 17, police Col. Mudhahar al-Jubouri said. Many of the victims were there to seek jobs as policemen, al-Jubouri said.

"I am pleased to join with Rep. Conyers as we continue our efforts to ensure that every American is afforded their Constitutional right to vote," stated Rep. Tubbs Jones. This legislation seeks to combat the tremendous voting irregularities that plagued both the 2000 and 2004 elections. If in fact we see it is our obligation to secure democracy around the world, to monitor and oversee free and fair elections in other countries, most recently in Iraq, then we must ensure, protect and guarantee the right to vote right here at home."

The Times' star reporter gave a scoop about her old friend Ahmad Chalabi to Chris Matthews a week ago, and it still hasn't shown up in her own paper. Now the Times' public editor has pressed Executive Editor Bill Keller for an explanation, but Keller replies that this "is not the time" for that.

By William E. Jackson, Jr. (February 06, 2005) -- Last Sunday, Judith Miller revealed, on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC program "Hardball," that sources had informed her that U.S. officials were, once again, "reaching out" to her old friend, disgraced former Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, even pushing for a major post-election cabinet post. It is clear, however, that the New York Times reporter committed a serious professional and public relations blunder in the "Hardball" interview. On Sunday, Daniel Okrent, the public editor at The Times, took Miller and the newspaper to the woodshed in his column "Talking on the Air and Out of Turn." Okrent wrote: "To anyone who has tried to follow the jagged contours of Ahmad Chalabi's connections to the Bush administration, Miller's statement was a shocker. This piece of news hadn't appeared in The Times that morning; it didn't appear in The Times the next morning....But if you watched 'Hardball' and saw Judith Miller identified as a reporter for The New York Times, you would have every reason to think she was speaking with the authority of the paper." He continued: "Judging by their absence from the paper, one must conclude that either Miller's Chalabi revelations were wrong or unsubstantiated or that The Times is suppressing an important piece of news. If the first, the paper has suffered a blow to its credibility....If there's an act of suppression going on, the price is of course incalculable.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 5 (Agence France-Presse) - A United Nations rights investigator examining the situation in Afghanistan said Saturday that foreign troops had mistreated and possibly tortured people.
"There is a very unusual practice in Afghanistan, mainly foreign forces, who have taken upon themselves the right, without any legal process of arresting people, detaining them, mistreating them and possibly even torturing them," said Cherif Bassiouni, an independent expert on human rights appointed by the United Nations.

Martin Mubanga went on holiday to Zambia, but ended up spending 33 months in Guantanamo Bay, some of the time in the feared Camp Echo. Free at last and still protesting his innocence, he tells the full story to David Rose

The rain is turning to snow on a blustery January morning, and all the men gathered in a parking lot here surely would prefer to be inside.
But the weather couldn't matter less to the robotic sharpshooter they are here to watch as it splashes through puddles, the barrel of its machine gun pointing the way.
The Army is preparing to send 18 of these remote-controlled robotic warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April.

Detailed CIA report is ordered to be kept secret for fear that ‘prying eyes’ may uncover truth

By Greg Szymanski

An internal CIA report, naming individuals who may have been responsible for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, has been kept secret despite public outcries and congressional demands to release the incriminating evidence. The delays began last July on orders from CIA’s acting director, John McLaughlin, and have continued since Porter Goss took charge last September. Critics claim President George W. Bush has personally directed Goss, a Republican partisan, to keep the names from "prying eyes" in order to hide the truth exposing either government incompetence or outright complicity.
Ever since 9-11, the public has called for government accountability, but the Bush administration has been trying to block truth-seeking efforts at every corner. The lack of government cooperation began with obstructing justice at ground zero by FEMA’s quick removal of hard evidence and continues now by keeping the CIA report secret.

"The list arrived in one of two boxes containing tickets and other forms. People who showed up for tickets were asked to write down names and addresses of anyone attending the event on the forms, which Carley believes were then returned to the White House."- Fargo Forum, Almquist, 2/5/05 http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?page=article_full&id=82503

Which brings up the question, how many other blacklists are there? Just asking.

Conservative commentators Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus have been outed recently for taking money under the table to endorse Bush administration programs. These cases are only the tip of a much bigger iceberg, as you can tell from looking at the images I'm attaching here. I wrote about it three years ago in a story that described the work of conservative direct marketer Bruce Eberle, whose Omega List Company specializes in raising money using mail and e-mail.
On a section of the website that has subsequently been removed, Omega List was quite straightforward about the fact that it pays conservative commentators to endorse clients and their causes. A series of web pages featured conservative radio show host Blanquita Cullum explaining exactly how the system works and how other radio hosts could get in on the gravy. "You do what you do best!" she said. "Get on the air and talk to your listeners! Drive them to your website by conducting a daily survey or a contest on the topic of your choosing." Eberle's "polling wizard" software, installed on the site, would then capture the names of respondents so that they could be hit up for money. "What happens next is a cakewalk," Cullum continued. "Omega will call you with an opportunity to send an endorsement e-mail to your list . . . and receive a royalty for lending your name to a cause, organization or product you believe in. . . . Omega gives you their specialized software absolutely FREE and presents you with an opportunity to earn an extra $25,000 or more annually.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Prime Minister Helen Clark on Monday ruled out a visit by President Moshe Katsav to New Zealand next month, saying diplomatic relations were still strained following a passport fraud case involving suspected Mossad spies.
Ties between the countries plunged last year following the conviction and imprisonment of two men New Zealand alleges are Israeli agents who tried illegally to obtain a New Zealand passport.

Condoleezza Rice turned Washington's rhetoric on Iran up another notch yesterday, telling Iranians they would have to "live up to their international obligations" to avoid a conflict with Israel.
But back in Washington, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, struck a more dovish note, saying the estimates he had seen said Iran was "years away" from building a nuclear bomb, and that the White House had meanwhile opted for diplomacy.
"The president handles Iran policy, he's decided on a diplomatic route ... They're on a diplomatic path," he said.
The Bush administration has sent mixed signals to Tehran in the past week, mixing bellicose and reconciliatory remarks, amid reports that the Pentagon is already sending special operations teams into Iran to spot potential targets.

President Bush is proposing to reduce spending on public health and social welfare in the US to help pay for tax cuts and the war in Iraq, according to early reports of today's White House budget.
In an attempt to keep government spending under control at a time of record deficits, Mr Bush's proposals to Congress will include cuts in public housing subsidies, in health projects aimed at diseases related to poverty, and in food stamps, which help America's poorest buy groceries.
Mr Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton but is now running deficits of over $400bn (£215bn) a year, partly as a result of an economic slump and the September 11 attacks. But the turnaround is also due to huge tax cuts which disproportionately benefit the wealthiest 1% of Americans, and the war in Iraq, for which the administration has asked for another $80bn this year.

Jerusalem - Israeli rabbis were planning on Sunday to hold special sessions in 100 synagogues to pray for the failure of this week's summit between prime minister Ariel Sharon and new Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.

Washington -- The White House-ordered inquiry into the intelligence failures about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction won't blame individual officials for the errors that contributed to President Bush's decision to start the war almost two years ago.

Instead, the nine-member commission will emphasize how the United States should deal with future threats, according to commission spokesman Laurence McQuillan.

An Israeli military court has ordered the release of the army commander responsible for shooting to death a young Palestinian girl at point-blank range in the Gaza Strip last year, according to the Israeli press.
Thirteen-year-old Iman al-Hams's body was found riddled with over 17 bullets near an army post in the southern Gaza strip refugee camp of Rafah last October.